The Art of (Macro) Barking

Whether you're a recruiter or looking for a guild yourself, that wonderful faction-wide channel called GuildRecruitment can be a dream come true. It's full of people looking to make contacts and connect in groups. But alas! The fast pace and traffic can make competition difficult to sift through. A macro is often the answer.

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It's honestly that simple. The number bit should be changed to the number that your GR channel appears. For me, that's channel 5. Advertise it every 5-7 minutes, not every thirty seconds. And don't forget to spell properly and use correct grammar. Nothing says "fail" like misspelling your own guild name!

Macros are limited in space so you want to put out as much info as possible about your guild. There are certain things that people want to see, and things that people don't care about. And please please please, don’t make a two-paragraph macro with two chat lines. I know you want to get your info out there, but it makes you look like a pain in the ass for pushing other people’s ads off the chat window. You’ll be put on ignore lists quickly just for the spam.

Tabards. Alright, we get it. You managed to pull together 10g to buy a guild emblem. No one cares because it's an easy thing to do. How does this set your guild apart from the others? Saying you have a cupcake on your tabard doesn't make you any more special.

Banks/Vaults. Again, we get it. You pooled funds to buy bank space. Banks don't make you cool; they flag you for saying "Hey, we have lots of resources! Come ninja us!" No one cares.

Member Numbers. Congrats, you have 30 members. I don’t give a flying monkey how many of them are level 80 or 40 or whatever. This tells me nothing about your guild – leave this for the interview portion if it comes up. Advertising this tells me that you’re paying more attention to how many members you have on your roster and not what kind of members you have.

Name. We can do a /who and figure out your guild’s name. We can also shift-click your name in chat to see your guild’s name. While some guilds have shorter names that won't take up much space, longer names (especially those with odd ASCII letters) can be dropped to save space. This is mostly based on personal preference of the recruiter.

Generic Words. Everyone wants to be mature. Everyone wants to be great. Everyone wants to be <insert beaten-to-death adjective here>. Grab a thesaurus and be different. Sometimes you don't even need an adjective in your macro.

Misleading Words. This forum has a new C-word. It's casual. What is casual? I have no idea...do you? Does anyone reading your macro? Casual could mean that you don't take raiding seriously, or casual could mean that your guild is fun but actually buckles down when it comes to boss time. Casual could mean that your members log in and act social or that your members log in once a week and have little interaction. It's a bad word because it implies that you're not serious and lack dedication/focus.

Instead, try defining yourself a bit more. "Relaxed raiding atmosphere" is leaps and bounds ahead of the C-word. "Dedicated raiding team" sounds so much better than a pile of slackers hiding behind a single word. You don't even have to be a raiding guild to be more specific. “Close-knit leveling group” can describe a social guild with lots of alts.

Just please, for the love of Elune, promise me that you won't use the C-word! I will hunt you down and give you nasty Moonfire-infected splinters, followed by a swift beatdown with a dictionary.

Guild Type. Are you recruiting for a leveling guild? Raiding? PvP? Roleplaying? Tell us where on the spectrum you fit. And while we’re on the subject, there are certain details you need to include when advertising certain guilds.

Raiding. How far progressed are you in the various tiers, or are you just starting Naxx? If you’re gearing up for Naxx, make it known. Don’t try to pass off a Naxx10 guild as being ready for Ulduar and Sarth3D. Do you raid every night or just on weekends? Is it for 3-hour evenings or will I need to order some extra caffeine for your 7-hour insanity fests? Are you recruiting everyone or are you only looking for shadow priests?

Roleplaying. This one is near and dear to my heart, being an active roleplayer myself. What style are you (light, med, heavy)? Is there a main theme (mercenary, evil, thieves)? Do you only accept certain races (Sentinels are Kal’dorei only fighters)? What events do you hold, if any (story-telling, initiations, battles)? Are only certain levels accepted and are newer RPers allowed?

Oh and just a note on RP guilds: the whole “We’re all evil” thing is over-done. Yes, really. If I see another guild advertising that they’re all badasses, I’m going to completely ignore you and your other 23748293 poser knock-off guilds. Some groups can pull this off really well, but it’s honestly a beaten-to-death concept for a guild. So are “Knights of the <Generic Noun>” and “<Generic Noun> Knights.” Maybe I’m biased, but it seems that every RP guild wants to be badass somehow. Be DIFFERENT!

Leveling. Does everyone level on their own or do you have regular events like instance runs and group quests? People can level on their own just fine – you have to get people to want to level in your group. Having “plans of future raiding” isn’t a selling point. Do you only accept certain level brackets, and is there a minimum level? Perhaps your groups pool resources to help leveling? Are you a socal group of players?

PvP. Are you guys gankers, or do you rock the battlegrounds? World PvP or Arenas? Do y’all take over Wintergrasp single-handedly, or are you sniping people off mining nodes? There are multiple ways to organize PvP, so be specific. Premades are sometimes only for specific BG’s. And do you only run together on certain nights or is it a kill-fest at all hours? Do you (*shudders*) help to run twink groups?

Out of the hundreds of people in the GuildRecruitment channel, you have to stand out and be that one healer/dps/tank/roleplayer/gladiator that’s highly desirable for a guild. When making your macro, there are some things to include and some items that you really want to keep under the rug.

Experience on other toons. I’ve seen this a few times and it astounds me that people actually do this. Apparently it seems like a good idea to put “5/5 T7 BM/MM hunter LF relaxed raid guild. Also exp on priests.”
Allow me to put some emphasis on this: NO ONE CARES. The character that you’re using to speak in chat should be the one that you want to place in a guild. Sorry, using your level 1 bank alt doesn’t add to your credibility and it also blocks people from doing a quick Armory check of your character.

If you have another character that you want to raid/PvP/RP on and want to include that in the macro, that's okay - tell us that you want to guild with the alt (or are willing to guild with one or the other). The fact that you've played a priest when your hunter is a main tells us...nothing that we care about.

You just leveled. This one scares me, both as a former recruiter and full-time healer. “Just dinged X” is not something that you want to make known when advertising in a chat channel. It makes you look like you care more about your level than what you’re doing, and it makes you look noobish. As a healer, I REALLY don’t want to hear from the tank “O hai, just dinged 80 5 mins ago lol” when starting Naxx10. For the love of Elune, save this for the interview portion when you talk about your raid experience.

Stats. The first thing you want is to get someone’s attention that your goals line up with theirs. Gear critique comes after that. Also putting stats in your message immediately puts you on the measuring stick with others in the channel. Why would I recruit a 3000AP hunter when I could get one with 3500AP?

Past experience. Have you raided Naxx or killed Sarth3D? Have you plundered Crosroads or earned a PvP title? People will judge you based on what you’ve done, so tell them! You can communicate this via the “gearing”; phrase. “T7 geared druid” is short and sweet compared to “Have done Naxx10, VoA10/25, Sarth10/25.” If someone replies to your macro, you can elaborate more on the specifics. And just a hint: no one cares about heroic instances by name. A short “Heroic-geared druid” is enough to get the point across.

Spec. If you have dual spec and are able to raid in both, something like "MM/BM hunter" would do the trick. Only mention the spec that you want to raid/pvp/level with and have gear for. Don’t advertise as resto if you’re a bear tank with zero SP gear.

10/25's. You can relay this in one of two ways. Either your opener could be "LF 25-man raid guild" or "LF 10-man raid guild" but be sure to mention this somewhere if you have a preference. It can be a great filter for guilds that don't suit your style right off the bat. If you can do any raid happily, you don't need to mention this.

Availability. Use simple words, not exact schedules. Things like "weekend evening/night" will reach a wider audience of potential guilds than "Fri-Sat 6-10, Sun 7-9" but the situation can change if you have a wide range of hours (6-9pm instead of three different times throughout the week). Macros also have limited space so choose your verbiage wisely.

Be sure to spell everything properly. The “pst” ending isn’t required (it means Please Send Tell to get more info). Only advertise in GuildRecruitment – that’s what it’s there for. Trade is a cesspool of idiots.

A lot of guilds have websites where they can post guild rules, recruitment and raid openings, schedules, etc. But you can't put all of that in a macro, so a simple URL is fine to add. But what's the accepted URL-adding etiquette?

Long names. Websites like Guildomatic and Wowstead offer a choice when making the guild website: use one of their subdomains, or use one of your own. If you use a subdomain, it'll look something like "guildnamehere.wowstead.com." Usually when the creation/setup process asks you what to put in front of the subdomain, you should put in an abbreviation of your guild to keep it short so it's easier to remember and type. Post #19 here has more info on websites that can shorten your URL for you (so you don't have to reroll your website).

Inappropriate names. Your guild could be the most progressed thing in the history of WoW, but I'm not interested in joining if your website is "www.buttsuckingvampiressexleg.com" or somesuch. This should be common sense.

Numbers. I'm usually pretty good at this. Someone posts a website in chat, I'll glance at it, alt-tab, and open it in a browser. If I have to alt-tab 36 times to figure out what 90-digit code you put in your domain, my interest will be lost quickly. Humans are like that - easily amused and easily distracted. A number or two is fine, but more than 3 is pushing the limits of the human attention span.

Appearance. Typically a guild website is easy to spot, either via the host or the name of the guild being included somehow. If you give me your guild website and your guild is...<Twilight Marauders> and your URL looks like "www.k23725hghwsexleg.com" I'm going to be suspicious. Don't make it look like a keylogger (and likewise, don't POST keyloggers).

Guild Name. I sort of covered this earlier, but it's a good idea to have your guild name in the URL somehow. Guilds with multi-word names can use initials. This makes it easier to remember for future reference and when alt-tabbing. It's also easy to recognize in browsing history/bookmarks.

Single Line. While chatboxes vary in size, the rule of line breaks does not. A well-presented URL shouldn't break between two lines. It could be a short URL, but you might have to adjust your macro wording to get the URL onto one line. It'll be easier to read and remember. Just be sure to NOT use hyphens if it spans two lines and you want to connect it; this will give the wrong web address.

And for everyone who doesn't know what the feral hyphen looks like, I have captured one:

-

Crikey!

Appropriate Extensions. Google has a very simple homepage...it's just Google.com. Some websites have extensions on the end (set apart by forward-slashes), so be sure to include them when linking your URL in the macro.

LF raiders with dedication for Ulduar
on the weekends. Check us out at
www.guildwebsite.com/index.html!
This is a good one, as there are no numbers and everything is included. For a URL, this is a short one.

LF leg enchants - - - - -
This has no URL and needs to be in the Trade channel. There are wild hyphens...Run!!!

<Chaos> is looking for a shadow
priest for Naxx10 on week nights.
More details online at www.guild
website9098.sexleg.com/
It goes downhill with the URL. Shorten it and drop the numbers...and sex leg.

I was lagging through Dalaran the other night and noticed a few random things. More will be edited in as others contribute :D

RP macros that have an IC intro (You find a flyer on the street...) are really REALLY annoying to read sometimes. Putting guild information in the macro is the priority, while dressing it up is on the back burner. And please don't do an IC intro followed by another chat line with OOC information. It's a waste of chat space and often shoves several lines of chat off the screen.

Putting links to WoW forum threads is a bad idea for a macro. Have you seen how long those suckers are? Instead of tossing the entire line-breaking URL into your macro (which has lots of numbers, symbols, and it's too long anyway) you could try mentioning "More info in MG forum thread" in place of a URL. Just make sure that your thread is very easy to find, and keep it bumped in a timely manner. Having to sift through 5 pages and the broken search function to find "Lolz guild needs raiders!" isn't going to go over well.